I’ll look into that. One thing to note is that minions definitely have pathing issues. WvW is notorious for bad pathing, and that + general lag they will spend ages not doing anything sometimes.
Spectral Armor definitely needs some changes, it isn’t really worth it at this point. As OP said, you can get everything but the protection from a skill with half a minute less CD, and that protection isn’t enough.
Why are we still fighting about 1vX?
He was talking about Closed Beta. Look at footage (there is a bit), and you’ll see what he means. We had the best of everything.
You mean our podcasts that are an hour long discussion every week about Necromancers? Yeah, wonder what a Necro podcast is doing in the Necro forums, or an all Necro guild doing all Necro events.
Huh, you know when I was writing that I was asking an honest question (I wasn’t sure what he meant), but now that I read it back it sounds incredibly sarcastic.
@Softspoken, in fact that is exactly what minions do right now, or very close to it. Marks will acquire aggro, and swap it once (I believe, its been a while since my testing), but after that its up to single target attacks. Certain AoE also doesn’t work, likely because of that same confusion. In fact, if you go through and actually look at the logic they have used to code their minions (through tests), what they have done is, in theory, perfect.
The singular problem with their AI is that it has errors, for whatever reason, and as such looks quite messy. If they could tighten that up so there were no errors, you could see a very high degree of control from good MMs, short of what Rangers can accomplish, but not by a lot.
@Volt, I’ve been levelling up (slowly) a character of every profession. However, whenever that gets boring, and it happens fairly quickly, I always jump back on my Necro. Earlier today I was finishing up a daily in one of the higher levels of the Centaur areas, and did an entire event chain with this one warrior. The two of us took down multiple champion bosses, tons of enemies, and it was an absolute blast playing my Necro through the fights.
Two not great players managed to do it completely on accident without really trying, against a fairly good team. Unless you are trying to say Bas is better than the top Necromancers in the game, and their completely uncoordinated luck is better than a fully coordinated team that can do things like AoE stealthing and gibbing a guardian.
I’m sorry you disagree with it, but frankly SOAC and BoC have been helping at least a few people in the community. Its hardly spam when we have at most 2 topics active at once per forum.
If a sigil fails to proc, it does not go on CD, so yes having both there would increase the chances.
The forge still has an element of luck to it, especially if you want the rarest ones of a given tier.
Oh, Soft’s thing reminded me of one.
Chain fearing people off places, especially other Necromancers that just popped Lich; corrupt stability, fear, fear, fall off ledge, wasted elite.
Are you talking about adding new items or putting the items for each rank (what we get via RNG) up to be bought instead of forcing us to play the lotto until we get what we want?
It has a lot to do with it. It is the nature of coding (and things in general) to have a much higher propensity to have fault the more complex they are. Illusion AI is very simple, they attack a target until they expire, or the target is invalid. Necromancer minions need more complexity than that, they need to acquire a target, and do so in ways that make sense. This means multiple sets of aggro in differing tiers that override each other. It means pathing in such a way as to be able to carry out aggro. It means being able to seamlessly swap targets while in combat.
There is actually a lot of variance when it comes to minion AI, whereas mesmer Illusions aren’t much more than auto casting skills with HP bars. And that variance leads to many ways to mess up.
As for other games, I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t another game. ANet isn’t known for their great AI skills, in fact current AI is a step up from GW1. This isn’t an excuse, they should have done better, but its simply reality.
I love my minions. Honestly, the only reason I picked up GW1 in the first place was because I saw a Necromancer with Bone Fiend when I was watching my cousin play once, and was like “Oh. My. God… MUST HAVE”. As much hate as they get (both deserved and undeserved) I still love using them.
The theorycrafting. I’ve spent a lot of time in game theorycrafting for Necros, and it is a lot of fun. Its also a good way to keep things interesting when you get bored.
The visual effects. They might not be as flashy as other things, but Epidemic looks amazing, and I love the subtlety.
Spectral Grasp. You haven’t had fun in this game until someone has just about escaped you, only to be flung back to you. I’m not ashamed to admit this makes me giggle like a little girl every single time.
Flesh Golem’s Charge. Kind of double dipping with minions here, but Charging can make a highlight reel of its own. Watching him fly into a fight and launch people left and right is always hilarious, and even better when I go back to watch footage and have the time to appreciate the way they flop around helplessly. Oh, and on Khylo, the noticeable feeling of “oh kitten, not this guy again” when I come and kill treb for the third time, and the person doesn’t even attempt to defend it and just runs off, never to repair the treb again.
If you are going for a 50% CD DS build, then you are going to flash DS essentially every 5 seconds, situation permitting.
That means you have 3 traits in that build that are useless. Drop 10 from Death Magic, put it into Curses and get Spectral Attunement. Swap out the other abilities that require you to stay in DS as well for, honestly, anything else. I’d also highly suggest picking up staff with greater marks instead of shrouded removal, and soul marks. I’d also highly suggest a rune set with precision. You could easily push it up to 40% crit chance with Fury, and that is going to utilize that 30% Crit damage much better.
I can’t say what higher level people do, since you guys have high MMR and so actually need to play the meta more. With the people I get matched up against (even when in a higher level group), I don’t have any issue running Necro, even with a power/minion hybrid. Even when I do occasionally pick up Warrior, I can have some fun, but I am far from good enough to know if Warrior has the build diversity and viability that Necros have in low to upper middle level of play.
Frankly, I’d just say do whatever is fun for you. This game is about having fun, and if the Warrior as a class isn’t in a place where you can enjoy it right now, then it might be time to mess around on another class (or in hotjoins, where everything is viable), and wait till Warrior becomes viable.
Because they are balanced that way; each class has different methods to attain balance, otherwise it all comes down to every class needs to have access to everything.
In addition, they need to actually spec into it, in some way. A thief needs to take shortbow or shadowstep, elementalist needs Blink/dagger offhand, and Mesmers have nothing comparable to what DS 2 used to be. While it can be argued that those are minimal “give ups”, since most of them are fairly good anyway, they do have some marginal economic cost. Necromancers had absolutely no cost for their mobility, it was 100% inherit in every single Necro build.
He was referencing Closed Beta, where we were, in fact, hilariously OP. For every position there was a Necro build that did it best. Not only could you out everything someone of the same role, but you could do it with relatively high abilities in other areas. Necro bunkers were still very mobile with high damage. High damage Necros could still eat tons of damage. Oh, and did he mention Lich form’s auto attack was a cleaving Backstab on a 1s auto attack? Yeah, Necros were OP, and ANet bashed their skulls in with a nerf hammer.
That said, we are very close to being in a great place. We have a multitude of builds that could work, but are just a tiny bit short of viable. Just a bit too defenseless, bit too slow, not quite enough damage, etc. I’d say first fix our trait tree, which I think could be done without too much effort, and see where that gets us first. Look at things like siphoning, our lack of stunbreaks, LF generation on certain weapons, and overall synergy. Obviously fix the bugs in minion AI, and the bunch of other bugs that still plague skills overall. See where that all gets us, because I would bet that it will put us in the right place or very close. And if at the end of all the minor tweaks we are still not quite there then take in the more drastic changes people in the forums want.
Frankly, this is already what ANet is doing, people just want it faster.
Like Yendorion said, its a totally different game, and a lot is different. That isn’t to say that Necromancers have changed entirely, I still often feel like my old Necro, but the mechanics are vastly different in this game, and its not the same class.
Play Necro, see if you enjoy this one. If you do, awesome, keep playing. If you don’t, move on and see if you like something else. IMO all the classes have unique and fun mechanics to them. All of them are reasonably viable in every game mode; some might not currently have a place in the very highest of each mode, but that’s not necessarily permanent.
Illusion AI is incredibly limited and simplistic. They spawn in, attack their target, and go away. If the target dies, they die. Want to switch targets? Too bad, they don’t do that, you’ll need to spawn in new ones.
His point is that the AI Mesmer’s are using is much more limited than minion AI, and as such very little room to mess up. Basically, comparing minions to illusions is void, there is very little to compare besides them both being entities spawned into the environment via skills.
Congratulations to all the guests. If you thought it was a bit nerve wracking to be recorded, fear not! Now its simply streamed live over the internet to everyone listening :P
I’m actually very excited to do this. It will make Q&A much easier, and hopefully we can help out the community better.
And Thiefs can wipe out entire teams without losing a single hip point…
Don’t make absurd claims. Show video proof. I highly doubt both statements quoted above and would love to see proof.
It really isn’t that difficult to think of a situation where an Epidemic could wipe a team. In the L2P that Gibbly and SOAC did, they wiped a team pretty easily by stacking a bunch of condis on them and then blowing them up with 2 Epidemics right after the other.
No one is saying that it is easy to wipe a team with Epidemic, but if you hit someone with 15 bleed stacks, some various other condis (burning, confusion, w/e else), then chain Terror them and Epi, the entire team can be stuck in a 4 second fear taking over 4k DPS just off their conditions. Is this a realistic scenario that currently happens often? Of course not, in fact outside of teams running multiple Necros it is incredibly rare. But it remains that Epidemic has the highest “one click” damage potential of any skill in the game, if it is given the required setup.
Okay, I’m thinking 5pm PST (server reset time) is probably best. I won’t be able to make all of them with this time because of other scheduling, but I’d like for this to become kind of a daily event that people look forward to doing, and it should help everyone out with their dailies anyway. Anyone that wants to take part in the events, just log on a few minutes before 5pm, grab up a group, and head into the dungeon.
Then every once in a while we might do longer events that we will stream. I’m thinking we will kick it off with a streamed run of TA, I’ll let you all know when I get a good date for us.
Can we increase it to like 5? I can think of 3 traits that need to go just from the Minor parts of the trees.
I would love to see some of the old mechanics back. There are a fair number of traits that we could get rid of currently (Spite Minor Grandmaster, Curses I, Death Magic Minor Adept + Master and IX, Blood Magic I and X, Soul Reaping II and V; all pretty much useless utilities), and then replace with far more interesting traits/mechanics (vigor + jagged horror on dodge pls).
Just a suggestion from the gameplay video: don’t drop your wells instantly on top of people. You are running 2 wells that have very strong utility, but you will run into a fight that you have already won and drop all 3 of them, when at most WoS will secure the kills. You also have the tendency to drop wells in situations where the person can very easily get out of them; although in all fairness some of those people were terrible and just stood in the wells regardless. Just realize that that kind of play is going to render wells useless against better opponents.
Those were changed because not having a Necro on your team and going against a Necro meant you might as well just sit in base and let them win. We had the damage of a backstab thief that could use 100b while moving, with the defenses of a guardian and ele combined. It was stupidly OP.
On a side note though, bring back some of those skills. At least a few of them are incredibly more interesting than some of the stuff we have now (wtb Jagged Horrors on dodge)
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Warriors need sustain, not stealth/blinds. They need ways to actually be able to stay in combat for more than a few seconds. This is not the way to do it.
AoE boon stripping in WvW just won’t become a possibility against good zergs. The ability of AoE boon application with shouts and combos will always outpace the ability to strip them.
Kravick, there are certain builds and professions that can handle 1vX, and some that never will. Those that can are those that rely on the ineptitude of the enemy, and can prey on their lack of skill. Thieves, via stealth, are incredibly hard for new/bad players to handle, because they are constantly disappearing and then spiking you from stealth. They have abilities to secure stomps easily, and also to avoid damage readily.
Mesmers have this ability to a degree as well. Using stealth/invulnerability/clones they can confuse and overwhelm baddies with their high burst while not being punished back for their lack of defenses.
However, you will never see a Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Engineer, or Elementalist be able to do this except against the most amazingly bad of opponents. This is why it is a terrible benchmark for anything but a thief build, because thieves, and to a lesser degree mesmers, are the only professions capable of doing this.
And frankly, every 1vX video is a showing just as much of how terrible their opponents are as to how good they are. You will never see this happen when both sides are at a high level of play.
3 Chances to bleed yes, but Earth Sigil has an internal CD of 2 seconds, so you cannot proc it twice until that CD is up. So 0-2 bleeds.
A single Epidemic can completely wipe a team. It requires coordination, however, and frankly very few teams show the coordination to actually throw out good Epidemic’s consistently; and most of those teams are EU and don’t run condi cleave comps.
Bone Fiend is amazing; he has 2x finishers every few seconds.
So I guess I’m the only one that don’t see the power of this minion? We don’t have spammable combo fields so how do these finishers provide any help?
So I take it the first thing I should be going for trait-wise is the minion damage trait?
http://i.imgur.com/UNTXhCz.jpg
Instead of III Death Magic you can use II if you feel it helps.
Instead of VII Blood Magic you can use VIII if you use Well of Blood.
We have combo fields coming out our ears, and if you ever play in a group, you should have TONS of combo fields. That means with a single fire field he’s going to apply 2 applications of burning (I think 2 seconds), which more than doubles his damage. Poison fields (which we have plenty of with Death Nova), means poison, again dealing quite a bit of damage. Water/Dark fields are going to heal him. The presensce of combo fields will instantly make Bone Fiend out damage shadow fiend.
I’ve used this kind of a build before. Near permanent retaliation, fury, good weakness uptime, the problem is that this type of build is very difficult to play. Every 5 seconds you have to make the choice of whether to flash DS to gain your benefits and continue going with a fairly high damage build, or to stay in DS to tank damage. These kinds of builds can work, but I’m not sure how well it compares to other builds.
Overall not bad. I personally use Power/Prec/Vitality gear, with a staff + soul marks instead. The HP scaling with how much LF regen you are looking at is amazing, and you can afford to tank a lot with DS that way.
Exactly. Unfortunately I don’t think there is anywhere that this can work. 15% isn’t enough to make the trait worthwhile; as that is still vastly lower than any mobile build, and doesn’t stack with anything.
I think it should be axed, or combined with another trait, and make room for another trait. It’s just never used right now, because there is absolutely no reason you would want it.
I’d say that Greater marks should be standard (the size, not unblockable), if a weapon is absolutely useless without a trait, I think its a sign that the weapon needs to have some changing.
I’d also replace reanimator with something that gives vigor.
Imo, this trait needs to be changed completely. This isn’t a bad suggestion, but its base of just 15% or w/e isn’t competitive in the slightest, there is no reason to want that.
Their delay is not a bug.
If you took the time to read my post, I stated that it was minion AI.
I completely agree they need to fix the bugs in minion AI. But there is a programmed delayed response in their programming. I’ve done the testing, I was one of the people in the very video OP linked; it is a programmed delay, not a bug in the AI.
Their delay is not a bug. It is programmed in that they take 2 auto attacks or they take 1 auto + some delay. They have a pull programmed into their aggro.
And unless you are suggesting its a good idea to de-summon ALL your minions between fights, that just isn’t possible; and de-summoning is just… lol.
No, get 20 into Death magic for 20% reduced minion CDs and 50% higher HP first.
its almost like people who come on the forums have no idea how a business works. They have resources. They allocate resources to the place where it will give them the best product. Allocating animators to a minion: probably not that important, considering how amazing the animations on the new weapons are.
Flesh Golem not being available underwater is not that big of a deal. A very, very small part of the game is actually underwater.
@Vicious, its possible to not sit there jamming 1111111111111 while pulling. Auto once, let the mob get close, continue attacking.
The ability for a full bunker ranger to be able to hit for huge damage because of his pet is ridiculous, and there isn’t any way that a Ranger can justify it. Balance is set up around the idea that you start off at some base, and sacrifice something to get something else. If you run with high damage, you sacrifice survivability. If you run high survivability, you sacrifice damage.
Right now, Rangers get burst damage comparable to glassy builds, but with the tankiness of a full bunker. That is not balanced.
Flesh Golem, the elite minion, is like 50% of minion auto attack damage. Minions aren’t amazing at low level damage, they are there mainly to tank damage and do a little extra on the side. The 30% damage trait is huge for them as damage sources.
Axe/Focus is generally the best setup. Vulnerability= more damage. Don’t blow up bone minions the second they are up, let them auto attack until they are low them blow them up. Bone Fiend is amazing; he has 2x finishers every few seconds.
Staff is a great second weapon for the regen/AoE.
No. I like being able to actually pull things when I have minions out. But please do get rid of the stupid glitches in their aggro that happen (for whatever reason).
In WvW sure banner warrior is fine.
And no, I will still laugh all over a warrior’s condition cleansing. If you want to argue that a warrior has good condition removal, thats fine; he gets it by completely removing all offensive presence and going into a specific build. Every condi necro gets 2 full condi cleanses just by bringing the weapons we want. If we want to go full condi cleanse, we’ll still poop on warrior’s cleansing, its not even a competition.
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A very good post Skyro, the questions/suggestions are quite good as well.
I think again, another issue is that few people tend to look at Necromancers for anything except condition damage. Our condition support is incredibly strong, especially when paired into a condition cleave team. An HGH with a condition support Necro will not just put out very large AoE condi pressure, but the Necro will be essentially “covering” the damaging conditions with chill, weakness, immobilize, cripple, etc, in addition to the actual effects that those condis have. I’m actually surprised that they don’t use this more in EU (I’m guessing its probably due to something I’m not thinking of), because most condition cleanses that are being used are limited to 1-2. Meaning they can effectively be nullified by condition spam.
I think something else that would really help out is if they made the hybrid amulets in PvP not suck (I’m looking at you Rampager).
Tried pretty much about everything,including dagger builds and healer/boon duration.
A support warrior kittens all over a support necro all day long and laughs at a condition necro.
Untargeted condition cleansing ,untargeted condition flipping at 1200 range and with 1k extra toughness and more hp.
Heck the banner heal/regen and negation is more solid than a necromancers entire burst of healing ds well and marks.
Lets just face it,whoever bought this game out of love for what necro was got ripped off bigtime.
Are you talking about PvE or PvP? PvE support warriors are fine, not necessarily considered top tier but its a perfectly playable style.
The problem is PvP banners just… aren’t that good. To my knowledge, they can be destroyed; you do not want abilities that are so easily counterable as that. But really the biggest issue with banner warriors in PvP is the fact that you need a warrior on your team to use them. You’re basically saying my team is happy to fight a 4v5 all game, except our 4 will have both forest buffs for team fights.
A support Necromancer can heal your bunker and anyone else on point for more than their own dedicated heal, keep perma regen, and then have at least one stacked with chill and a variety of conditions, while still having decent condi pressure. Put them with an HGH engi, and all they need to do is press Epidemic every 15 seconds and put out more pressure than your support warrior could ever hope to achieve, while still filling themselves with supportive abilities.
Whats the problem with both of these support builds? You’re team already has an Ele/Guardian which can do your job better, while still providing necessary Burst/bunker to the team, which neither warrior nor necro can say in a support build.
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Thats a balance issue. Necromancers have the mechanics in place to play attrition: life stealing, conditions, high sustained damage, class mechanic that at its core is attrition, relative immunity to conditions. The key is for them to tune both our own mechanics, and other class/build mechanics so everything is at a balance.